This is a bit of a weird series of quest related bugs with the Elves of Taltos. Bear with me please. :P
I had made my first elven alpine settlement and played for an hour or two. Eventually I wanted to start building some walls but was confused as to what the difference was between the two types of wooden fortifications (walls & wines) since both cost the same and if their price (or some of it at least) would be refunded once I switched to stone walls (which also have two versions of unknown difference, citadel & haven iirc).

In the end I sort of just clicked to build the wooden walls hoping to get some insight into how it works, looks, what it costs (how large is a "segment") but then I realized just how big of an investment it was and that I had probably wasted both wood and influence early in the game. Unfortunately, unlike with other buildings, wall construction couldn't be cancelled (intended?) so I decided to delete this settlement and start over since I was still very early in the game.

***The important part***
I started a new elven alpine town like before but this time some of the quests would become resolved before I actually completed them. For example I finished the "build elven shrine" quest before I even started building the thing, the same happened with the "breed 5 deer" quest. Finally, after the first human attack, fire arrows suddenly became unlocked for my rangers even though I was nowhere near researching it (didn't even have the required building).

Since then I haven't been able to log back in (reported in another thread) to see what's happened (if I still have fire arrows) but it's as if my account remembered that I had completed some of the quests on the previous playthrough and then auto-completed them the second time around (only the ones mentioned). This doesn't explain the fire arrows though.

__________________
The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based! *Jean-Luc Picard*